A Study on Heat Transfer Enhancement of Oil Cooler

A shell-and-tube oil cooler with plate fins was suggested to improve the defect of the conventional shell-and-tube oil cooler. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the heat transfer performance on the shell side of shell-and-plate finned tube oil cooler with three different tube numbers(9, 13 and 19). Oil flowing on the shell side was cooled by cold water flowing inside the tubes. A shell-and-tube heat exchanger of an oil cooler consisted of one shell pass and two tube passes with the inner tube diameter of 8.82 mm and the tube length of 575 mm. From the experiment of shell-and-tube oil cooler, it was found that the heat transfer coefficient of oil cooler with 9 tubes, as oil flow rate was increased, was approximately 140% and 250% higher than that of 13 and 19 tubes, respectively. The heat transfer coefficient at the water flow rate of , also was 120% and 140% higher than that of 2.4 and , respectively.